


Domesticated

by hopeless_eccentric



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Canon Non-Binary Character, Cuddling & Snuggling, Domestic Fluff, Fluff, Future Fic, Hurt/Comfort, Identity, Nonbinary Juno Steel, Other, Rabbits, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, blindly speculating that all goes well, i love this funky little bunny so much, rabbits can be metaphors people, that's right folks this is about a rabbit, with a rabbit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-04
Updated: 2020-10-04
Packaged: 2021-03-07 23:41:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26806036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hopeless_eccentric/pseuds/hopeless_eccentric
Summary: Peter didn’t know why Juno cared so deeply about a sewer pest from his home planet, but Nureyev supposed it was neither his place to ask or judge for the time being. Even if the creature made his skin crawl between its size and the jagged edges to its claws, Peter was sure there had to be something Juno saw in them.“When you come back home, the rabbit will be as good as new,” he smiled. “I promise you that, Juno.”
Relationships: Peter Nureyev/Juno Steel, Small Fry & Juno Steel, Small Fry & Peter Nureyev
Comments: 67
Kudos: 137





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I've spent so long wanting to write a fic about this funky little rabbit I'm so excited
> 
> Content warnings for animal injury (left VERY vague because I hate that shit), blood mention, food, alcohol mention

Nureyev had always loathed the idea of a ‘date night’ back when home was neither a place nor a person to him. It seemed as dry as those white wines he liked least and reeked of home renovation and couple’s therapy and those stream programs where couples pretended to struggle to decide which of three luxury houses to buy. The idea of domesticity of any kind made his skin crawl for years. When it was that performative and boring, it just gave him a headache. 

When years of travelling the stars with Juno Steel turned to years of finding a corner of the galaxy to call their own, Nureyev had been vehement that no such ‘date night’ would be put in place. They could go on dates as frequently as they wanted, but Peter drew the line at a once-weekly occasion on which to express interest in a relationship. 

Juno had agreed, though when Peter thought about it, he supposed neither of them were entirely at fault when dates began to fall on Friday evenings, at least most of the time. The fact of the matter was that he didn’t mind, nor did he notice. When Juno mentioned it on one dinner date, Nureyev told him it didn’t count if it didn’t feel like they were only a couple once per week. 

He supposed it wasn’t date night he had been afraid of, but rather the routine, clockwork nature of a relationship that had become regular. Nureyev didn’t like routine, least of all in such matters. However, Friday evenings were always a bit different, more an occasion to be domestic outside of the house instead of within. Juno made sure of that. 

The two of them were making their way back from one successful Friday evening with held hands and one takeout bag each when Nureyev heard the scream. 

The niceties and suggestions for a late-evening encore to an early evening date fell away from his lips when the gaping maw of the nearby alley sputtered out another squeaking cry. Nureyev squinted, as if the inky black cloud of darkness might produce anything more than the strange, pathetic sound worming its way into the street.

Peter shot a look at Juno, who had frozen in his tracks. 

“I know that sound,” he murmured to himself, dropping Nureyev’s hand and the bag of food in one motion. 

Nureyev hauled the bag into his hand and followed Juno, having to jog to keep up with his sprint into the mouth of that alley. However, before he could make it three paces past the sodium orange streetlight, Nureyev felt himself topple into Juno, who had frozen once more. 

“My dear, what is—”

“Shh,” Juno interrupted, voice a hiss. “Be quiet, I think it’s hurt.”

“What’s hurt?” Nureyev insisted, though it seemed the source of the sound was Juno’s only interest. 

Nureyev shifted the food into his left hand to reach for his knife with his right. Even if date night never offered up any kind of threat, Peter supposed old habits died hard and the old, gnawing feeling of being chased died even harder. His only solace was how unthreatened Juno looked, sinking to his knees and holding a cautious hand out in front of him.

“Juno, are you sure that’s wise?” Nureyev pressed. 

“Hey, buddy,” Juno started. 

The weak whimpering from before turned into a kind of snuffle, like a small rodent wrinkling its nose, but louder somehow. Nureyev squinted against the dark, only to see a large, fanged snout come into view. The hand around his knife twitched, but Juno shook his head. 

“It’s just a baby,” he explained. 

“What kind of baby has fangs like that?” Nureyev sputtered out. 

Juno didn’t respond, only motioning for a bag. 

“I think she’s hurt,” he murmured, words distracted as he began to run his hand over the animal’s head and between a pair of long, half-floppy ears that wriggled and twitched appreciatively when he scratched right behind them. 

“So it’s a she now?” Peter continued, though he pressed the bag of food into Juno’s hand nonetheless. 

He frankly had no idea how Juno was still calm around something very large, very fanged, and very injured. Even as he passed the bag of food forward with his arm stretching as far from himself as possible, Juno kept his hands running slow, careful lines over the animal’s head. 

“There you go,” Juno smiled. 

He broke his touch away to reach for his own leftovers, which he placed in front of the beast to let it sniff. It made an appreciative grumble and nosed the container open. 

“So what is that?”

“Remember when I told you about rabbits back on Mars?” Juno asked. 

“You really weren’t kidding,” Nureyev breathed as the words of a Juno years younger came back to him. “Do they eat human food?”

“They’ll eat just about anything,” Juno chuckled. “Make sure she doesn’t stop eating. I’m gonna take a look at that injury.”

Nureyev took a tentative step forward, freezing when the creature growled. 

“Knife down,” Juno instructed as he began to stand. 

Nureyev put the knife away and the growl faded. He took another step forward. The rabbit didn’t growl again, but its eyes remained wide and wary as he inched ever closer. 

“You are—” he broke off to swallow. “Quite something for an adolescent of any species.”

“You should’ve seen me at seventeen,” Juno snorted, though his smile audibly faded when he set his eyes upon the rabbit’s back leg. “This doesn’t look good.”

Though Peter had yet to tear his gaze from the eating creature, he could hear the twinge in Juno’s voice. He had expected some level of revulsion from someone who avoided any and all blood like the plague, but instead, his voice merely ached with a mournful sympathy Nureyev hadn’t heard from him in years. 

“What do you propose we do about the matter?”

Juno sighed, shaking his head. 

“I don’t know how well she’s gonna do if we leave her here,” he started, voice audibly cracking. “I don’t know how she ended up somewhere like here anyway. She probably snuck into the wrong ship as a baby, but there’s no way she’s adapted to the sewers here.”

Nureyev stood from his crouched position by the rabbit’s mouth, even if he’d been instructed to do otherwise. As much as he wanted to keep his eyes on the animal for as long as possible, he couldn’t bear that waver in Juno’s voice for longer than he had to, so he walked over and pulled him into the tightest hug he could manage. 

“Are you alright, dear?”

“Yeah,” Juno murmured. 

Nureyev pulled back far enough to meet his eye. 

“I can tell this is important to you,” he began. “I know you’re going away for the weekend, but I’ll see what I can do.”

“You—what?”

Nureyev nodded. As much as the fangs on the creature made his hand twitch towards his knife just out of instinct, the way Juno’s voice shattered when he saw the rabbit’s injury was enough to sway him. He didn’t know why Juno cared so deeply about a sewer pest from his home planet, but Nureyev supposed it was neither his place to ask or judge for the time being. Even if the creature made his skin crawl between its size and the jagged edges to its claws, Peter was sure there had to be something Juno saw in them. 

“When you come back home, the rabbit will be as good as new,” he smiled. “I promise you that, Juno.”

“I can cancel my trip if you don’t want to be home alone with—”

His words died away when Nureyev shook his head and parted from the hug. Peter turned to pick up the remainder of the takeout bags, but found the rabbit had snuffled her way through both of them. Behind him, Juno laughed. 

“You’ve gotta watch out for those things,” he chuckled faintly. “They’ll eat whatever you put in front of them.”

“How should we get her out of here?” Nureyev began, trying and failing to stoop in his heels. 

“I’ll get her.”

Juno fell to his knees at the creature's side, one arm working her onto her back like a playful dog and the other staying steady until the rabbit had found a comfortable position to be picked up in. After about thirty seconds of adjusting, Juno stood with a muffled grimace, worsened only when the rabbit squirmed again. 

Nureyev’s heart dropped and his hand flew to his knife, but the rabbit had only moved to rest its head and front paws over Juno’s shoulder. She caught sight of the weapon and growled, fangs bared and eyes seeming to glint in fiery fury when they caught the light of the street lamp. 

“Shh,” Juno chuckled, a hand running over her back. “Don’t growl at your dad, Small Fry.”

“Small?” Nureyev sputtered. 

“I call all of them that,” Juno shrugged. “You should see them when they’re really little. I mean, this one’s on the smaller side, but the cat-sized ones are my weakness.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” Nureyev replied, though his eyes still trailed back and forth between the rabbit’s fangs and the injury marring one of its hind legs. Even as it relaxed, every part of it was sprung, still twitching and squirming while Juno tried his best to comfort it. 

“Just breathe for me, okay kiddo?” Juno murmured through the ear that had whacked across his face. “Let’s get you home.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there is so much literal and figurative fluff in this gird your loins
> 
> Content warnings for mentioned animal injury, food mention,

Juno expected to return home to a house in tatters, if he was lucky. Once, after moving into his own apartment, he attempted to take in an injured rabbit and discovered that their habit of chewing everything extended to furniture, remotes, and most other things that would be missed. 

However, when he stepped through the door and found no tooth marks in sight, relief was not the emotion that flooded him. 

“Nureyev?” Juno called, wishing his voice wasn’t so tense. 

He was well aware that most people liked sewer rabbits significantly less than he did, and from how Friday evening went, he assumed Nureyev was among that number. Even with the rabbit making a bed of their sofa, he kept a few feet of distance at all times, as if an invisible bubble surrounded Small Fry. He wasn’t even sure if Peter realized that he always kept one hand close to the hilt of his knife. 

Juno had known Nureyev long enough to know exactly what he looked like when he was scared. However, he was nearly sure Nureyev wouldn’t botch this, especially with the way sincerity had weighed in his voice when he promised to take care of Small Fry. 

Nonetheless, he couldn’t help the wave of shaky panic that rose through him when he heard no response. 

Juno set down his suitcase, removed his shoes, and left both beside the door. An irrational fear recommended that, should anything horrible have happened, he needed to be ready to run. He crept his way through the kitchen as quietly as he could manage, finding nothing there but an unwashed cutting board and a few carrot tops in the sink. He continued his odyssey room to room, but found neither a sign of his husband, nor the rabbit until he poked his head through the door of the bedroom. 

“You’re home early, love,” Nureyev smiled from somewhere underneath a snoring, furry mound of rabbit. 

“I see you two started getting along,” Juno snorted, hoping his joke might hide the relief that hit in a wave so strong it nearly knocked him over. 

“Darling,” Nureyev murmured, voice muffled when Small Fry gave a pointed snore. “I know, darling, but I’d like to talk to my beloved wife, if that’s fine by you.”

Small Fry snorted again. 

“I know you don’t want to move, my dearest, but you are very heavy,” Nureyev chuckled. 

The rabbit growled. Juno felt a laugh pulled from him. 

“That was a complement, I insist,” Nureyev audibly smiled. “What a big and strong rabbit you are, my dear. Now I might be able to appreciate that if you moved a few inches to your left.”

The rabbit shifted a few inches to the right instead, but either way seemed enough for Nureyev to raise his head. 

“That works just as well, I suppose,” he mused, raising his newly freed arm to attempt to tame the mass of tousled, and if Juno had to guess, licked hair that used his head as a pedestal. “How was your trip, my love?”

Juno crossed the room in three strides to pull his husband into a hug.

“Thank you,” he breathed into Nureyev’s shoulder. 

“It wasn’t horribly difficult,” Peter protested.

“It still means a lot.”

“Well, once I figured out how to talk to her, there wasn’t any issue at all,” Nureyev shrugged. “It just took a few dozen carrots to bribe her into a bath, and then once I got around to treating that poor leg of hers, we were, for lack of a better phrase, as thick as thieves.”

Juno took a seat between his husband and the yawning mass of fur, though the yawning mass of fur didn’t seem to take too kindly to that, worming between them until she was stretched across both of their laps and sticking a paw into Nureyev’s face. 

“About the carrots,” Juno started. “We didn’t have any when I left.”

“Oh no,” Nureyev waved him off. “I went out and bought some.”

Juno raised an eyebrow, though his quizzical expression shattered when Small Fry squeaked.

“Why? I told you, these guys will eat just about anything.”

“I wanted her to have a balanced diet,” Nureyev protested. If not for the rabbit between them, Juno would have kissed him then and there. 

“I love you,” he grinned instead. 

Small Fry grumbled something and stretched again, though Juno suspected it was just an excuse to sink her uninjured back leg into his chest. He laughed, though the noise was partially kicked out of him. 

“Love you too, Small Fry,” he sputtered out. 

She stood up, if only to pad back over to Nureyev and curl up in what had to be an uncomfortable ball over his lap. She didn’t seem to care, however, merely seeking warmth and comfort and a pair of careful hands scratching right behind those soft, floppy ears of hers. 

“I suppose I’m stuck here once again,” Nureyev sighed, though a friendly laugh lined his voice. 

“Guess I’m stuck here too,” Juno shrugged. 

He spread out on the bed besides Nureyev, unable to help a grin when Small Fry nuzzled her head into his shoulder. When that liberated Peter’s arm, he reached over to take Juno by the hand. 

“I meant to have dinner delivered when you got home, but she’s had quite the few days, and I didn’t want to wake her,” Nureyev whispered as a faint, whistling snore began to rise from the blanket of fur now pinning both of them in place. 

“I’ve had a hell of a day too,” Juno snorted. “I might just join her.” 

Small Fry let out a huff that expressed Juno’s feelings better than he ever could with words, so he worked his free hand onto her head and scratched gently. He couldn’t help a laugh when her back leg kicked, nor when it nailed Nureyev directly in the chest with the force of a solid punch. 

“Dear God,” he wheezed. 

“Hmph,” Small Fry grumbled into Juno’s chest. 

“And to think I thought you were nearly domesticated,” Nureyev sighed, though the lazy, private smile that was distinctly his, and not that of any other alias, waltzed across his face. 

“I think it takes a couple years,” Juno chuckled, giving Nureyev a pointed look. 

“Are you insinuating something, Juno?”

“All I’m saying is that there’s a reason you two get along,” Juno mused. 

Small Fry squeaked and shifted around again, stepping over and around them to a chorus of stifled groans and complaints at her disregard for human organ structure and the concept of pain. However, her brief reign of terror came to an end when she flopped down again, slotted between the two of them and snoring once more. 

“I think we ought to keep our voices down,” Nureyev whispered, an affectionate grin pulling on his words. 

Juno wondered vaguely if his teeth had always been that dull, or if they just looked that way in comparison to the fuzzy, snorting predator using them both as pillows. 

“Wake me up if I conk out for too long,” Juno returned at the same volume. 

He tried and failed to lean across the rabbit for a kiss, so Nureyev shifted and filled the space for him, if only for a brief, strained moment that was no less sweet despite the blockade. 

“Sleep well, my dear,” Nureyev tried not to yawn himself. 

Juno couldn’t help but think of the rabbit stuck on some transport vessel from Mars to a tiny planet a million miles away, probably scared beyond its capacity for fear and no larger than a small dog. Judging by its size, the poor thing probably found itself terrified, a stranger on a strange planet digging through trash until some part of the local fauna left the gash hidden below Nureyev’s neat bandaging job. 

In a way, he was reminded of Nureyev when first he proposed the prospect of a single, definite home. A look that still haunted Juno flashed across his face. Had Juno not known better, he would have said he looked like a rabbit in headlights. However, the moment he saw the expression, he knew that Nureyev was sixteen years old again, newly nameless, and trying to pretend that didn’t excite and terrify him in equal measure. 

At first, they had agreed to a home in name only, just to quell whatever old habit or old ghost kept Nureyev’s suitcase perpetually packed. They traveled often and never settled for long, until days without some small outing or another turned to weeks, and then after a few months or so without a vacation or off-planet heist, Juno woke up in the middle of the night to find Nureyev out of bed and silently unpacking his suitcase. 

It wasn’t an easy change, but when Nureyev came back to bed to hold him close and murmur something about running himself ragged and the privilege of retirement, Juno knew it wasn’t a choice to be taken lightly. 

Peter Nureyev wore domesticity like an outfit he hadn’t thought to try, which was to say it looked surprisingly good on him. He hadn’t so much resigned as turned a page, determined to carve himself a home. At times, he forgot the shape, so Juno ensured he was never alone in finding a little corner of the galaxy to make his own. 

After a long trip in a star hauler and a short eternity in terror for either the safety of his husband or the snoring mound of fur he now used as a blanket, Juno found sleep weighing on him like an anchor. Holding two of the most dangerous things in the galaxy close, Juno closed his eyes and let himself drift.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i LOVE this funky little rabbit you guys have no idea all my uwus going out to Small Fry II
> 
> Thank you all so much for reading!! Make sure to SMASH that kudos button and leave a comment down below!
> 
> Find me on tumblr @hopeless-eccentric or on twitter @withane22 !!

**Author's Note:**

> AAAAA LOVE THIS BUNNY
> 
> Thank you all so much for reading!! Make sure to SMASH that kudos button and for every comment I get I'll give my dogs a little kiss on their heads
> 
> Find me on tumblr @hopeless-eccentric or on twitter @withane22 !!


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